


two words colliding

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27370690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: In a world where you find out who your soulmate is after hearing them sing for the first time, Sinara is adamant about not letting Kasius hear her sing. Of course, Kasius always manages to fuck up all her plans.
Relationships: Kasius/Sinara (Marvel)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheQueenInTheNorth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/gifts).



> Written for Lou for the Final Mission Rarepair Exchange. This is my first time writing them and I am a bit nervous but I really wanted to give you this.   
> The prompt was “I’ve loved you for years”, and this whole idea came from Paloma Faith's version of "Never tear us apart".  
> Rated T because Sinara can not stop swearing.

In a universe where you realize who your soulmate is the first time you hear them sing, karaoke bars are somewhat of a hot commodity.

Sinara hates them with the passion of a thousand suns.

Every time the topic of soulmates is brought up in private, Kasius says to her- in that obnoxious, reedy tone of voice that Sinara also hates-  _ oh my God, Sinara, do you have to be so damn intense about everything,  _ which is rich coming from Kasius, of all people. Whenever the topic is brought up in public, Kasius humiliates whoever is trying to shame her. It is something of a staple about their friend group.

Still, it is hard to keep a group of horny, dumb twenty-somethings away from karaoke bars for too long. They are hot-spots for meeting your soulmate alright, but since they are also hot-spots for people who _ don’t  _ end up meeting their soulmates, they are scolding-hot hook-up spots. 

Most of the time, Sinara doesn’t even bother coming, but it was Kasius’s birthday last week and she hasn’t yet learned a way to say no to him. She always tells herself that she has to get on that asap, but they have known each other for over eighteen years and every time he opens his mouth with a new idea, her brain still sighs on her _ this might just as well happen. _

Besides, her scowl works marvels in getting her out of being the Designated Driver.

She knocks down her Vodka Tonic while Raina glares at her from the other side of their small, cram-full table. Sinara shows her teeth off- she likes Raina well enough, but she has a reputation to maintain. It doesn’t take long for the butthurt response to come, and, of course, Raina doesn’t know how to do anything if it’s not going for the throat.

"Why do you never sing Sinara? You won't find your soulmate like that, darling!" Her voice is sickeningly-sweet: she knows exactly what she is doing, and she even ignores Kara’s shushed attempts of talking her out of it.

Sinara considers just biting her head off for good measure, but (again, of course; things are getting quite repetitive around them) Kasius feels the need to come to her rescue, "Oh, Raina, sweetheart, haven’t you heard? Sinara doesn't believe in soulmates. She is cool like that."

Kara mumbles something about getting refills for everyone and tugs on her girlfriend’s hand until Raina follows her begrudgingly. The rest of the group had scattered to the wind when they got the first whiff anticipating Sinara’s ire, and now that there isn’t an audience anymore, Kasius’s focus quickly goes back to the blonde that has been making googly eyes at him for the last twenty minutes. Sinara looks down at her empty glass again, wishes she had something to keep her hands occupied, something to put on her mouth that could keep her from asking stupid questions. 

This time, his coming to her defense didn’t make her feel seen and validated, all those mushy, gross feelings that Kasius always elicits in her. This time, Sinara just feels dread. For all that he defends her stance on not going actively looking for her soulmate, Kasius has never taken the time to ask her why she does things this way. It would be uncharacteristic of her- of them- to ask why he doesn’t care, so Sinara doesn’t.

Kasius mumbles something about going out for a smoke and Sinara can see the blonde from the next table giggling something to a friend before also standing. For all that Kasius complains about not finding his soulmate- and Sinara has heard all the speeches more than once; she never says anything, but she always listens to him-, he never seems bothered about reaping on the benefits of these nights full of yearning people. 

It takes her one minute to notice that Kasius left his pack of cigarettes on top of the table, the stupid, stupid man. He can’t even keep up a good excuse, how could he keep up with a life-long, universe-mandated commitment?

Sinara grabs the packet of cigarettes in a spur of the moment decision. She will go outside, kick the ass of the blonde if needed, and tell him that he is wrong.  _ Of course  _ she believes in soulmates. How can she not, when she realized her soulmate was the five-year-old boy she had met two days prior, who was singing Happy Birthday to her? 

She does believe in soulmates  _ and  _ she also loathes them; those things are not mutually exclusive. 

She changes paths two steps away from the door on a whim and starts moving to the back of the bar, to the impromptu stage setting. She hasn’t sung a single note in front of him ever since they were five years old. The logic was, until now, simple: if she is his soulmate, he will have to find out some other way. If she isn't, well. She would rather not know.

But he does not own her, Sinara realizes once she arrives at the music booth and glares down at the poor, under-rested guy who is working it. He can choose to go out with the blonde and be stupid and forget his smokes and don’t even bother keeping up a ridiculous pretense. He can choose to not ask her why she doesn’t want to find her soulmate. 

She can choose to tell him, even if he is too obtuse to understand it.

“I am going on a break,” the guy lukewarm-warns her but doesn’t move.

“One last song,” Sinara says, and she doesn’t even need to put on her absolutely terrifying expression.

“Fine,” he huffs and puffs like he is doing her a great favor. “Do you know this one?” Sinara does. “Go on, then, and please don’t make my ears bleed.”

Sinara walks on the makeshift stage and does not think of Kasius at all, only that maybe after this their friends will get off her ass for a bit.

_ Don't ask me _

[ _ What you know is true _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYtesyE7OA)

_ Don't have to tell you _

_ I love your precious heart _

* * *

She leaves the stage fully intending on taking a cab and going the fuck home.

Of course, damn Kasius has to piss in all of her plans.

The air night hits her on the face and the difference of temperature and oxygenation with the interior of the bar are disorientating. There are goosebumps on her arms, and she considers if using them to snatch some guy off a cab will be worth his sticky, lascivious stare on her body. Probably not.

“Want a smoke?”

She turns around so fast that she almost topples over her five-inch heels. There it is Kasius, back against the wall of the bar, no blonde in sight (even if it can’t have been more than ten minutes total since he left with her), rolling a cigarette between his fingers. Sinara fights the impulse of palming the box she knows is still in the back pocket of her jeans.

“Sure.”

Instead of giving her the cigarette to hold while he lights it up, he takes the lighter out of his pocket and brings it already lighted to her mouth. If it were anyone else, Sinara would bite their fingers off, but that is the heart of the issue, isn’t it? It is always him. It has always been him. It will always be him.

Kasius chooses the moment when her lips are busy blowing the smoke away to speak, “Nice voice, Sinara.”

If she were a lesser woman, she would be coughing up a lung at his feet. Instead, she gives herself a strong punch in the middle of her ribcage to swallow down the smoke and not look like a complete idiot. There are, of course, a million questions she wants to ask, but she only says, “Thank you.”

And then, Kasius laughs. 

It’s not his hysterical laugh of when he is watching his trash reality shows, nor his ice-cold one of when he is laughing _ at  _ you and not _ with  _ you. It’s the one that Sinara remembers and treasures of when they were ten and rolling around the garden, of when he gave his sweater to her when they were fourteen and the sleeves were way too long on her, of when they got high off their asses at nineteen and they held hands while they were waiting for their chocolate ice-creams to be served. 

“Sinara,” he says when the laugh dissipates, and the ashes from the cigarette are starting to burn her fingers, and she holds onto that sensation to not have to focus on the way his eyes make her feel. “We are not getting any younger, you know.”

“We are twenty-four, you asshole,” she replies, but where she would like to be spitting venom, her lips are trembling.

He pushes her hair off her face and Sinara both wishes she was wearing her usual braid to keep it protected from him and that she will never have to feel anything else on her hair but his hands. He is smiling, soft in a way he rarely allows himself to be anymore, and Sinara has to fight against herself to not close her eyes.

“Want to know when I knew?” he asks and Sinara feels something inside her snapping. He _ only  _ could found out now, she was very careful about that. She doesn’t say anything, but Kasius answers his own question. “We were nine and you had gotten into an ugly fight with Faulnak because he was mean to me.” They are out in the open, his hand against the wall near her head, the half-smoked cigarette at their feet where it fell from her hand, and even if lying is one of his specialties, Sinara knows that he couldn’t lie to her. Not like this. “You were in the hospital for a few days, and I knew then. I needed no singing. I knew that I couldn’t live without you.”

The same way he has been enveloping her with his words, he has been pressing her against the wall, now both his hands framing her face, so close that she almost chokes on his cologne. 

“You over-dramatic bitch,” she says, and it comes out more like a whimper than an insult.

“Yes.” His words are just strokes of air against her lips and Sinara is grateful for the wall because she is not sure her knees could hold her up on their own. “But yours.”

She can feel the kiss on every inch of her body before it even happens; she can feel the way he will kiss her now and the way he will kiss her twenty years in the future, all the kisses in between filling her body with pleasure and warmth and love. There is only one more matter she needs to know before she allows herself, for once, to surrender.

“Why now?” Kasius, always impatient, apparently decides that he has had enough of waiting and begins kissing down the long line of her neck. Sinara gasps but doesn’t allow him to deter her from her question. “I have been waiting for eighteen fucking years, why you tell me now?”

He raises his head again, and Sinara can not wait for the new way to wipe off that infuriating smile from his lips.

“Well, darling. You should ask yourself that. You didn’t want to sing for me, I figured I should wait till you were ready.” 

If the people inside the bar can hear her growl of frustration while she grabs his collar and reverses their positions just before pouncing on him, well, Sinara doesn’t feel even one bit bad for them.


	2. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kasius won't stop asking stupid questions, Sinara is annoyed by him. They might be soulmates, but life is business as usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small coda for Valentine's Day! 
> 
> Written for the prompt: “Why are you looking at me like that?”
> 
> There is one (1) sentence in this one that makes me wonder if this might need a higher rating, but M feels too high (this is not what I would expect an M-rated fic to be like). In short, proceed with caution and let me know if you think I should up the rating.

She gets two blissful rounds of passing the cigarette back and forth in silence before Kasius decides to start talking again.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I am not looking at you like anything,” she says, automatically on the defensive, too used to keeping her walls at least half-up around him. Now that Kasius  _ knows  _ maybe things will be different. Maybe not. Either way, it will take time.

“You are,” Kasius insists, but doesn’t push any further. Instead, he sits up on the bed, blankets pooled at his lap, and when he passes her the cigarette, he leaves his hand on her knee. Sinara doesn’t know what burns hotter: his skin on hers or the ashes falling from between her fingers. 

She looks outside the window. If he is so bothered by her eyes on him, she will look at him no more. It is a cloudy, chilly night, and the glasses are steamed, which makes it harder to feign interest in anything that is not here. On anything that is not him. She tries to not look anyway. 

“If you want, I can tell you what I am thinking while I look at you,” Kasius offers after a while. 

Sinara sighs. She knew how he was and yet she kept him close, let him find out, kissed him, rode his hand on the taxi on the way to his home, fucked him against the door, and then once again on the bed. She can play it cool no more: she does love him the way he is, talkative and annoying as he is.

She gives him a grunt and a nod; more than enough to set him off.

“I am thinking about all the time we wasted.” His voice is emotional and gets her to sharply move her eyes away from the window. He is not crying, but it is a damn near thing: his knuckles are white on the hand that is holding the blanket. “Not telling each other.”

“Not wasted,” Sinara interjects, surprising herself. Four hours ago she was fuming about him being obtuse and not caring enough about her to ask why she didn’t look for her soulmate. Now, her mind feels clearer and calmer, like him knowing was the last piece of the puzzle that made everything make sense. Or maybe it is just the sex that made her thoughts sharper. “We had what we had. It was good. Now, this is good too.”

She is not lying. She treasures those years of childish shenanigans, the intimacy developed over time, the ferocity they have built to defend each other, and even those moments of bitter longing. It has made them who they are and it has brought them here. She can not resent that.

Kasius moves his hand up her thigh and her belly to place his palm at her diaphragm. Sinara lets him and tries to not think about how she would trust him with her life.

“Will you sing for me now?” he asks softly, and Sinara almost chokes.

“Not a chance.”

“Oh, come on now, Sinara. You sang for a room full of strangers and you won’t sing four your soulmate?”

“I only sang because you pissed me off,” she replies, and she regrets it even before she is done saying it. 

Kasius doesn’t need to say anything: his smile says everything for him. Sinara tugs on the hand he has on her torso until he has to kneel on the bed to be close enough to her while she is sitting on the windowsill.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warns under her breath before kissing him.

He accepts the kiss willingly, his hands around her knees, and when they part, Sinara brushes his lower lip with the pad of her thumb and decides she likes the view of him on his knees. A thought to be revisited later.

“I won’t sing, but I will tell you what I was thinking before,” she negotiates. “I was wondering if you didn’t tell me before only because I didn’t, or if there were other reasons.”

It is a slippery slope of a question. Anyone who knows them would say she is the guarded one, but in full honesty, they are probably the same amount of emotionally hindered. They are both equally angry and terrified. Kasius just hides it much better under sarcasm and eye-rolling and more sass than he has a right to have.

Kasius just tilts his head to the side, lowering his eyes. It is not an answer but it is not a lash out either, and Sinara presses on, “Were you scared of me?”

“No.”

“Were you scared of what I was going to say?”

“No, no.” Sinara follows the column of his throat with her fingers. She can feel the lie there. “Maybe.”

“Why?”

“I knew you were my soulmate, but it was possible I wasn’t yours.”

In eighteen years, thoughts in that vein have run through her mind more than once. Sinara understands how he felt. She also knows it was a ridiculous fear. 

“Even if I weren’t, I would still be here,” she says, and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Prompts
>   * Image reactions
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



End file.
